Fic: It Takes Two, McCoy/Chapel, PG-13
For seren_ccd! Merry Christmas
Title: It Takes Two
Author: fringedweller
Rating: PG-13, because McCoy swears a bit.
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money from this
Length: 2772
Beta: None, so if you see any errors let me know!
Notes: The prompt was "One of them has a secret talent - playing guitar/piano/instrument, dancing, painting, etc - and the other stumbles across them practising. And now they can't get it out of their heads because it was so freakin' sexy."
I have shamelessly quoted the great Sheldon Cooper, I have just randomly selceted a bunch of dancing terms from Strictly Come Dancing and I can only assume the Hustle has survived to the twenty third century. Enjoy!
It had been the music that had made him stop in the corridor and frown, trying to place where the hell it was coming from. It was a very familiar piece; one that he’d suffered through God only knew how many hundreds of times in his youth when his mother had successfully forced him through cotillion training.
He’d tried arguing with her; aged nine, he knew he was going to be a doctor, not a dancer, and he’d told her so, quite firmly, aping the manner in which his father spoke when he was putting his foot down about an issue. Just like his father, thought, it hadn’t done him any good, and he’d found himself sulking in the back of the groundcar every Wednesday and Sunday evening until the age of eighteen as his mother deposited him cheerily at the local hall that the Atlanta branch of the Cotillion Society used to teach a new generation of southern belles and young gentlemen the fine and refined arts of polite conversation, social etiquette and ballroom dance.
It was a waltz piece, a pretty tune forever ruined in his mind by the memory of clomp-two-three, clomp-two-three, clomp-two-three. He’d eventually - eventually - ended up fairly light on his feet - his innate sense of competitiveness wouldn’t let him be the worst dancer in the room - but to him, dancing had been about concentrating fiercely on not tripping, trying not to let his hands get sweaty, and counting the minutes until the music ended and he could escort his partner back to the punchbowl and leave her there.
Muffled laughter interrupted the music, and his curiosity was piqued. Laughter was not something that he associated with that piece of music.
The corridor housed a row of small multi-purpose rooms. Occasionally they held overspill supplies, sometimes rows of inflatable beds held refugees. Their main feature was their blandness and their complete lack of comfort and ornamentation, which made it even stranger to find music and laughter coming from them. One door lock flashed red, and warned passers-by that privacy setting Alpha One had been engaged. McCoy raised an eyebrow. Alpha One was used by one person and one person only on board the Enterprise, and that was the captain. McCoy was surprised; locking the door with that code, music and feminine laughter pretty much spelt out one thing and one thing only, and he was disappointed in Jim. Everybody knew of his flirtatious reputation, but ever since he took command of the Enterprise he had restricted himself to shore-leave dalliances with non-Fleet women only. Fraternisation regulations were the toughest on the captain; they were the only officer banned from shipboard romance. Everyone else had a billion forms to fill in and regular mandatory meetings with the ship’s psychologist and First Officer to contend with, but only the captain had a flat-out ban on intra-ship dating.
There were no civilians on board right now. Whoever was in there with Jim was Fleet, and that meant Jim was breaking the one rule that so far he’d kept sacrosanct. All of the others, even the Prime Directive, had been bent, twisted and outright ignored as it suited him and the safety of the ship, but not once had he bemoaned the fraternisation rule in their weekly drinking session.
McCoy’s hand hesitated over the lock. He was the one person on board ship who could override Alpha One. Well, technically, that was a lie. He was pretty sure that Spock could hack it without too much difficulty, and that man-child up on the bridge could blink his pretty eyelashes and the lock would probably open itself for him. Scotty would just take a laser cutter to the bulkhead and cut his way through, ignoring the issue of the lock altogether, and Uhura would find a way to patch into the ship’s internal sensors and watch whatever was going on from the comfort of her own quarters. Sulu, he judged, would probably enjoy sliding on his belly through the Jefferies tubes in order to drop down into the room through the air vent.
But McCoy could just enter his own code and the door would simply open. He’d see his friend laughing and flirting with whatever pretty girl had caught his fancy, and then there’d be nothing but awkwardness between them. No, he decided, his hand hovering over the keypad. Best he just walk away and pretend he’d never heard the music at all.
Just as he turned though, he caught a very familiar voice coming through the bulkhead.
“Better,” she said, a light teasing tone to her voice. “But you’re still hopelessly uncoordinated.”
McCoy’s eyebrows rose into his hairline. Christine? She was the one in there with Jim?
“I guess you’d better give me a few more lessons then,” Jim shot back, sounding vaguely out of breath. McCoy didn’t need to see his damnably handsome face to picture the smugly satisfied grin he knew was sitting there. He’d stumbled into enough post-coital encounters when they’d roomed together at the Academy to know exactly what Jim Kirk looked like when he was (temporarily) sexually sated.
McCoy felt anger flare deep down in his gut and before he knew what he was doing he had slammed his code into the door lock and was storming into the room.
“What in the name of hell is going on in here?” he roared. “Jim, what the fuck were you thinking?”
Jim opened his mouth to answer but was cut off by McCoy as he rounded on Christine.
“And I thought you would have more goddamned sense than to go rolling around with this…this…” his mouth continued, as his brain caught up on the situation.
He’d expected to find a bed, at least. Or an air mattress. Or some kind of soft surface. And, the vaguely embarrassed part of his brain that was responsible for logical thought supplied, people who have just finished having sex usually had fewer clothes on than Jim and Christine did. A lot fewer. And Christine may have been wearing a figure-hugging, long-legged leotard, but she did have a wrap-around skirt tied around her waist and a decidedly unsexy pair of old, black dancing heels on her feet. And Jim…well, he had an old pair of sweatpants, an Academy PT t-shirt and an incongruous pair of formal dress shoes.
“This pupil?” Christine answered frostily, her beautiful face frozen into a look of intensely focused rage.
“Pupil?” McCoy asked weakly.
Christine stepped towards him, her heels making firm and decided clicks on the floor. Those clicks spelt imminent trouble for him, he could sense. He shot a look sideways at Jim, who was grinning from ear to ear in a decidedly unhelpful way.
“In case you weren’t aware, Doctor,” she said in a voice that conjured up images of large icebergs, overhanging icicles and certain, certain death, “I have an interest in dance.”
“She’s really good, Bones,” piped up Jim. “She won the Sol System Amateur Ballroom Competition for Tango, didn’t you Christine?”
“Twice,” hissed Christine.
McCoy swallowed heavily.
“I would have thought that you’d have known that,” Jim went on wickedly. “It’s in her service file. You were an instructor at the Academy, weren’t you, Christine? You had the practice room for your class just after I finished my hand-to-hand class.”
“I am so, so sorry,” McCoy began. “I completely misread the situation.”
“Damn straight you did,” Christine said, the anger not gone at all. “How could you think that I would…” her voice trailed off, and McCoy’s spirits plummeted further as he heard the hurt in her words.
“…with him?” she finished, gesturing vaguely backwards towards Jim.
“Hey,” Jim said, frowning, but backed off when McCoy and Christine both shot him identical looks of displeasure.
“Don’t mind me,” he muttered, retreating further back into the room. “I’ll just go stretch or something.”
He disappeared from view, and as far as McCoy was concerned, dropped out of existence entirely.
“I have never been more wrong about anything in my life,” he said desperately. “Christine, I apologise completely. I just let my anger get in the way of my own good sense. I was going to walk away until I heard your voice, and then I just…couldn’t.”
He looked at her straight in the eye, meaning every word he had said and those he hadn’t. And she knew what he hadn’t said. They weren’t stupid. They both knew that their genuine friendship and close working relationship was based on a large amount of sexual attraction, and not a small amount of genuine affection. But until recently she had been engaged to be married, and he was just stumbling free of the debris of his divorce.
She stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded her head once, decisively.
“I suppose if you didn’t know what was going on in here, then you could jump to a stupid and career-damaging conclusion,” she said eventually, and McCoy swallowed heavily in relief. “I’m teaching the captain the basics of a few ballroom dances,” she informed him. “There’s a big formal event lined up in a few weeks that Admiral Pike’s ordered him to attend, and he’s scared that he’ll make a fool of himself on the dance floor.”
“I did not say that!” Jim interrupted, annoyed, but Christine’s laser-like stare had him quietened down almost immediately. McCoy was impressed, and a little turned on.
“I can dance,” he said grumpily. “Just not the formal kind.”
“For some reason, the captain doesn’t think that the Hustle will cut it when dancing with the Betazoid Ambassador,” Christine said dryly.
“He would love my Hustle,” Jim said proudly. “Everybody does.”
He demonstrated, grapevining his way left and right along the room, circling his hips and clapping to an imaginary beat.
“Spontaneous nervous shocks causing muscular spasms?” McCoy offered at last, watching his friend writhe around the room.
“My best guess would be St Vitus Dance,” Christine replied, a small grin playing on her lips.
“You’re both fired,” Jim called back over his shoulder, still Hustling away.
“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to learn to dance, Jim?” McCoy scolded. “I could have helped you out.”
“You would have just yelled at me when I got it wrong,” Jim said accurately. “At least Christine tries to be diplomatic when I step on her feet and turn the wrong way.”
“You can dance?” Christine asked, sounding surprised. “I didn’t think you were the type.”
“Cotillion,” McCoy said heavily, and she nodded her head in sympathy.
“What’s that?” Jim asked, finishing up his Hustle with a surprise backflip and landing with jazz hands. Christine couldn’t help but laugh at him.
“In the South, preadolescent children are forced through a process called cotillion, which indoctrinates them with all the social graces and dance skills needed to function in eighteenth century Vienna,” McCoy said bitterly.
“It can be fun,” Christine offered. “Er,” she amended, off of McCoy’s sardonic look. “Probably only if you’re a girl. Who likes dressing up and dancing.”
“What’s the matter Bones?” Jim teased. “Didn’t you have the prettiest dress at the ball?”
Jim swept into a stylised bow and without warning yanked McCoy into waltz position and took off with him down the room.
“Slow down, idiot,” McCoy huffed, stumbling over both his own and Jim’s feet as he tried to accustom himself to dancing backwards and not leading. “It’s in three quarter time. And get your elbows down, your frame is for shit.”
Gamely they ploughed on around the room. Sadly McCoy was rising as Kirk was falling, and Jim hadn’t yet managed the delicate art of not bashing your partner into every piece of furniture in the room.
Christine howled with laughter at the pair of them.
“Stop,” she said eventually. “Stop, stop, stop. It’s no good, Len. Jim’s a visual learner. He needs to see what the hold is like before he can do it. That was the basic problem we were having before.”
“If Command would just authorise that new holodeck technology we wouldn’t have this problem,” Jim complained. “I could watch Christine dance with a holo partner and get the moves down that way.”
“We don’t need a holo partner,” Christine said, smiling sweetly, which was always when McCoy felt most worried. “We have Len. I’ll dance with him, and you can watch how he moves.”
“Alright,” Jim agreed, letting McCoy out of hold. “Off you go, Bones. Show me how it’s done.”
“It’s been a while,” McCoy said gruffly, fighting the urge to wipe his hands on his trousers. His palms were getting sweaty just thinking about having Christine in his arms.
“And I’m not a waltz specialist,” Christine said airily. “Relax. You’re bound to be better than him.”
“Hey!” Jim said in displeasure, not for the first time. As usual, he was ignored.
As soon as she stepped into his arms, the world fell away. Their working rhythm seemed to transfer neatly onto the dance floor. Her hand on his shoulder was light, but her grip on his hand was firm. She was wearing a delicate perfume that made her smell like she’d been rolling in a flower meadow and she was the perfect height for him, just an inch or two smaller in her dancer’s heels. He was careful to lead gently, not charge around the room demanding her to follow, as he had been accused of doing once or twice in Sickbay. In return she drifted around the floor with consummate grace, responding immediately to every quarter turn and change in direction.
Feeling bold, McCoy surprised her with an underarm turn and she laughed in delight as she completed the move perfectly.
“Tell me you know how to tango,” she breathed, looking up at him with wide, blue eyes and perfectly kissable pink lips.
“Ballroom or Argentine?” McCoy responded, dipping her into a move that would have disqualified them from a waltz but would have been perfect for a sultry tango. He was rewarded by a throaty laugh and her shapely ankle resting on his shoulder. He grinned, straightened up and let her put her weight on him as he strode backwards, half-dragging her in a perfect split-step that spoke wonderful things about her flexibility and his upper body strength.
Neither of them noticed the music change from the waltz piece to a more sexy, dramatic tango tune. Jim quietly slipped out of the door and reengaged the lock to Alpha One status. He walked away whistling the new tune, a beaming smile on his face. He may not be any better at dancing than he was before, but it looked like something good was finally happening for his friends. Just because he was banned from romance it didn’t mean that either of them had to live like monks.
“Captain?”
It was his Yeoman, Janice Rand, looking at him with amused concern.
“You were scheduled for your physical training hour,” she said, without having to reference the custom-built PADD that she was never without. “Did you decide to go shoe shopping instead?”
“I was trying to learn how to dance,” he told her honestly. He had tried withholding information from her before, and it was pointless. The woman was clearly part bloodhound. “But then Bones showed up and Christine got distracted.”
He looked her up and down thoughtfully.
“Can you dance, Janice?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Only the Hustle, I’m afraid. I’m not one for ballroom.”
“Perfect!” Jim said. “I get the feeling that the Hustle is about have a renaissance. Computer! Music!”
And that is why footage of the captain, his yeoman, six members of a security squad and a confused maintenance engineer who got swept up in the confusion, all doing the Hustle energetically along one of the ship’s secondary aft sections , became staple viewing of every Christmas party the Enterprise ever had.
And incidentally, Jim was right. The Betazoid Ambassador had loved his Hustle, and it became a new dance craze on Betazed. McCoy had to put up with his insufferable smirking for weeks, but it wasn’t so bad. Christine was proving to be a perfect partner both on and off the dance floor, and he was the happiest he had been for a very long time.
A very large bunch of rare and exotic flowers was delivered to the McCoy family residence in Georgia not long after McCoy’s first…tango with Christine, with a card that said simply “You were right about Cotillion. All my love, Len.”
“Eighteenth century Vienna my ass,” muttered his delighted mother fondly, and went to find a vase.
Title: It Takes Two
Author: fringedweller
Rating: PG-13, because McCoy swears a bit.
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money from this
Length: 2772
Beta: None, so if you see any errors let me know!
Notes: The prompt was "One of them has a secret talent - playing guitar/piano/instrument, dancing, painting, etc - and the other stumbles across them practising. And now they can't get it out of their heads because it was so freakin' sexy."
I have shamelessly quoted the great Sheldon Cooper, I have just randomly selceted a bunch of dancing terms from Strictly Come Dancing and I can only assume the Hustle has survived to the twenty third century. Enjoy!
It had been the music that had made him stop in the corridor and frown, trying to place where the hell it was coming from. It was a very familiar piece; one that he’d suffered through God only knew how many hundreds of times in his youth when his mother had successfully forced him through cotillion training.
He’d tried arguing with her; aged nine, he knew he was going to be a doctor, not a dancer, and he’d told her so, quite firmly, aping the manner in which his father spoke when he was putting his foot down about an issue. Just like his father, thought, it hadn’t done him any good, and he’d found himself sulking in the back of the groundcar every Wednesday and Sunday evening until the age of eighteen as his mother deposited him cheerily at the local hall that the Atlanta branch of the Cotillion Society used to teach a new generation of southern belles and young gentlemen the fine and refined arts of polite conversation, social etiquette and ballroom dance.
It was a waltz piece, a pretty tune forever ruined in his mind by the memory of clomp-two-three, clomp-two-three, clomp-two-three. He’d eventually - eventually - ended up fairly light on his feet - his innate sense of competitiveness wouldn’t let him be the worst dancer in the room - but to him, dancing had been about concentrating fiercely on not tripping, trying not to let his hands get sweaty, and counting the minutes until the music ended and he could escort his partner back to the punchbowl and leave her there.
Muffled laughter interrupted the music, and his curiosity was piqued. Laughter was not something that he associated with that piece of music.
The corridor housed a row of small multi-purpose rooms. Occasionally they held overspill supplies, sometimes rows of inflatable beds held refugees. Their main feature was their blandness and their complete lack of comfort and ornamentation, which made it even stranger to find music and laughter coming from them. One door lock flashed red, and warned passers-by that privacy setting Alpha One had been engaged. McCoy raised an eyebrow. Alpha One was used by one person and one person only on board the Enterprise, and that was the captain. McCoy was surprised; locking the door with that code, music and feminine laughter pretty much spelt out one thing and one thing only, and he was disappointed in Jim. Everybody knew of his flirtatious reputation, but ever since he took command of the Enterprise he had restricted himself to shore-leave dalliances with non-Fleet women only. Fraternisation regulations were the toughest on the captain; they were the only officer banned from shipboard romance. Everyone else had a billion forms to fill in and regular mandatory meetings with the ship’s psychologist and First Officer to contend with, but only the captain had a flat-out ban on intra-ship dating.
There were no civilians on board right now. Whoever was in there with Jim was Fleet, and that meant Jim was breaking the one rule that so far he’d kept sacrosanct. All of the others, even the Prime Directive, had been bent, twisted and outright ignored as it suited him and the safety of the ship, but not once had he bemoaned the fraternisation rule in their weekly drinking session.
McCoy’s hand hesitated over the lock. He was the one person on board ship who could override Alpha One. Well, technically, that was a lie. He was pretty sure that Spock could hack it without too much difficulty, and that man-child up on the bridge could blink his pretty eyelashes and the lock would probably open itself for him. Scotty would just take a laser cutter to the bulkhead and cut his way through, ignoring the issue of the lock altogether, and Uhura would find a way to patch into the ship’s internal sensors and watch whatever was going on from the comfort of her own quarters. Sulu, he judged, would probably enjoy sliding on his belly through the Jefferies tubes in order to drop down into the room through the air vent.
But McCoy could just enter his own code and the door would simply open. He’d see his friend laughing and flirting with whatever pretty girl had caught his fancy, and then there’d be nothing but awkwardness between them. No, he decided, his hand hovering over the keypad. Best he just walk away and pretend he’d never heard the music at all.
Just as he turned though, he caught a very familiar voice coming through the bulkhead.
“Better,” she said, a light teasing tone to her voice. “But you’re still hopelessly uncoordinated.”
McCoy’s eyebrows rose into his hairline. Christine? She was the one in there with Jim?
“I guess you’d better give me a few more lessons then,” Jim shot back, sounding vaguely out of breath. McCoy didn’t need to see his damnably handsome face to picture the smugly satisfied grin he knew was sitting there. He’d stumbled into enough post-coital encounters when they’d roomed together at the Academy to know exactly what Jim Kirk looked like when he was (temporarily) sexually sated.
McCoy felt anger flare deep down in his gut and before he knew what he was doing he had slammed his code into the door lock and was storming into the room.
“What in the name of hell is going on in here?” he roared. “Jim, what the fuck were you thinking?”
Jim opened his mouth to answer but was cut off by McCoy as he rounded on Christine.
“And I thought you would have more goddamned sense than to go rolling around with this…this…” his mouth continued, as his brain caught up on the situation.
He’d expected to find a bed, at least. Or an air mattress. Or some kind of soft surface. And, the vaguely embarrassed part of his brain that was responsible for logical thought supplied, people who have just finished having sex usually had fewer clothes on than Jim and Christine did. A lot fewer. And Christine may have been wearing a figure-hugging, long-legged leotard, but she did have a wrap-around skirt tied around her waist and a decidedly unsexy pair of old, black dancing heels on her feet. And Jim…well, he had an old pair of sweatpants, an Academy PT t-shirt and an incongruous pair of formal dress shoes.
“This pupil?” Christine answered frostily, her beautiful face frozen into a look of intensely focused rage.
“Pupil?” McCoy asked weakly.
Christine stepped towards him, her heels making firm and decided clicks on the floor. Those clicks spelt imminent trouble for him, he could sense. He shot a look sideways at Jim, who was grinning from ear to ear in a decidedly unhelpful way.
“In case you weren’t aware, Doctor,” she said in a voice that conjured up images of large icebergs, overhanging icicles and certain, certain death, “I have an interest in dance.”
“She’s really good, Bones,” piped up Jim. “She won the Sol System Amateur Ballroom Competition for Tango, didn’t you Christine?”
“Twice,” hissed Christine.
McCoy swallowed heavily.
“I would have thought that you’d have known that,” Jim went on wickedly. “It’s in her service file. You were an instructor at the Academy, weren’t you, Christine? You had the practice room for your class just after I finished my hand-to-hand class.”
“I am so, so sorry,” McCoy began. “I completely misread the situation.”
“Damn straight you did,” Christine said, the anger not gone at all. “How could you think that I would…” her voice trailed off, and McCoy’s spirits plummeted further as he heard the hurt in her words.
“…with him?” she finished, gesturing vaguely backwards towards Jim.
“Hey,” Jim said, frowning, but backed off when McCoy and Christine both shot him identical looks of displeasure.
“Don’t mind me,” he muttered, retreating further back into the room. “I’ll just go stretch or something.”
He disappeared from view, and as far as McCoy was concerned, dropped out of existence entirely.
“I have never been more wrong about anything in my life,” he said desperately. “Christine, I apologise completely. I just let my anger get in the way of my own good sense. I was going to walk away until I heard your voice, and then I just…couldn’t.”
He looked at her straight in the eye, meaning every word he had said and those he hadn’t. And she knew what he hadn’t said. They weren’t stupid. They both knew that their genuine friendship and close working relationship was based on a large amount of sexual attraction, and not a small amount of genuine affection. But until recently she had been engaged to be married, and he was just stumbling free of the debris of his divorce.
She stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded her head once, decisively.
“I suppose if you didn’t know what was going on in here, then you could jump to a stupid and career-damaging conclusion,” she said eventually, and McCoy swallowed heavily in relief. “I’m teaching the captain the basics of a few ballroom dances,” she informed him. “There’s a big formal event lined up in a few weeks that Admiral Pike’s ordered him to attend, and he’s scared that he’ll make a fool of himself on the dance floor.”
“I did not say that!” Jim interrupted, annoyed, but Christine’s laser-like stare had him quietened down almost immediately. McCoy was impressed, and a little turned on.
“I can dance,” he said grumpily. “Just not the formal kind.”
“For some reason, the captain doesn’t think that the Hustle will cut it when dancing with the Betazoid Ambassador,” Christine said dryly.
“He would love my Hustle,” Jim said proudly. “Everybody does.”
He demonstrated, grapevining his way left and right along the room, circling his hips and clapping to an imaginary beat.
“Spontaneous nervous shocks causing muscular spasms?” McCoy offered at last, watching his friend writhe around the room.
“My best guess would be St Vitus Dance,” Christine replied, a small grin playing on her lips.
“You’re both fired,” Jim called back over his shoulder, still Hustling away.
“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to learn to dance, Jim?” McCoy scolded. “I could have helped you out.”
“You would have just yelled at me when I got it wrong,” Jim said accurately. “At least Christine tries to be diplomatic when I step on her feet and turn the wrong way.”
“You can dance?” Christine asked, sounding surprised. “I didn’t think you were the type.”
“Cotillion,” McCoy said heavily, and she nodded her head in sympathy.
“What’s that?” Jim asked, finishing up his Hustle with a surprise backflip and landing with jazz hands. Christine couldn’t help but laugh at him.
“In the South, preadolescent children are forced through a process called cotillion, which indoctrinates them with all the social graces and dance skills needed to function in eighteenth century Vienna,” McCoy said bitterly.
“It can be fun,” Christine offered. “Er,” she amended, off of McCoy’s sardonic look. “Probably only if you’re a girl. Who likes dressing up and dancing.”
“What’s the matter Bones?” Jim teased. “Didn’t you have the prettiest dress at the ball?”
Jim swept into a stylised bow and without warning yanked McCoy into waltz position and took off with him down the room.
“Slow down, idiot,” McCoy huffed, stumbling over both his own and Jim’s feet as he tried to accustom himself to dancing backwards and not leading. “It’s in three quarter time. And get your elbows down, your frame is for shit.”
Gamely they ploughed on around the room. Sadly McCoy was rising as Kirk was falling, and Jim hadn’t yet managed the delicate art of not bashing your partner into every piece of furniture in the room.
Christine howled with laughter at the pair of them.
“Stop,” she said eventually. “Stop, stop, stop. It’s no good, Len. Jim’s a visual learner. He needs to see what the hold is like before he can do it. That was the basic problem we were having before.”
“If Command would just authorise that new holodeck technology we wouldn’t have this problem,” Jim complained. “I could watch Christine dance with a holo partner and get the moves down that way.”
“We don’t need a holo partner,” Christine said, smiling sweetly, which was always when McCoy felt most worried. “We have Len. I’ll dance with him, and you can watch how he moves.”
“Alright,” Jim agreed, letting McCoy out of hold. “Off you go, Bones. Show me how it’s done.”
“It’s been a while,” McCoy said gruffly, fighting the urge to wipe his hands on his trousers. His palms were getting sweaty just thinking about having Christine in his arms.
“And I’m not a waltz specialist,” Christine said airily. “Relax. You’re bound to be better than him.”
“Hey!” Jim said in displeasure, not for the first time. As usual, he was ignored.
As soon as she stepped into his arms, the world fell away. Their working rhythm seemed to transfer neatly onto the dance floor. Her hand on his shoulder was light, but her grip on his hand was firm. She was wearing a delicate perfume that made her smell like she’d been rolling in a flower meadow and she was the perfect height for him, just an inch or two smaller in her dancer’s heels. He was careful to lead gently, not charge around the room demanding her to follow, as he had been accused of doing once or twice in Sickbay. In return she drifted around the floor with consummate grace, responding immediately to every quarter turn and change in direction.
Feeling bold, McCoy surprised her with an underarm turn and she laughed in delight as she completed the move perfectly.
“Tell me you know how to tango,” she breathed, looking up at him with wide, blue eyes and perfectly kissable pink lips.
“Ballroom or Argentine?” McCoy responded, dipping her into a move that would have disqualified them from a waltz but would have been perfect for a sultry tango. He was rewarded by a throaty laugh and her shapely ankle resting on his shoulder. He grinned, straightened up and let her put her weight on him as he strode backwards, half-dragging her in a perfect split-step that spoke wonderful things about her flexibility and his upper body strength.
Neither of them noticed the music change from the waltz piece to a more sexy, dramatic tango tune. Jim quietly slipped out of the door and reengaged the lock to Alpha One status. He walked away whistling the new tune, a beaming smile on his face. He may not be any better at dancing than he was before, but it looked like something good was finally happening for his friends. Just because he was banned from romance it didn’t mean that either of them had to live like monks.
“Captain?”
It was his Yeoman, Janice Rand, looking at him with amused concern.
“You were scheduled for your physical training hour,” she said, without having to reference the custom-built PADD that she was never without. “Did you decide to go shoe shopping instead?”
“I was trying to learn how to dance,” he told her honestly. He had tried withholding information from her before, and it was pointless. The woman was clearly part bloodhound. “But then Bones showed up and Christine got distracted.”
He looked her up and down thoughtfully.
“Can you dance, Janice?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Only the Hustle, I’m afraid. I’m not one for ballroom.”
“Perfect!” Jim said. “I get the feeling that the Hustle is about have a renaissance. Computer! Music!”
And that is why footage of the captain, his yeoman, six members of a security squad and a confused maintenance engineer who got swept up in the confusion, all doing the Hustle energetically along one of the ship’s secondary aft sections , became staple viewing of every Christmas party the Enterprise ever had.
And incidentally, Jim was right. The Betazoid Ambassador had loved his Hustle, and it became a new dance craze on Betazed. McCoy had to put up with his insufferable smirking for weeks, but it wasn’t so bad. Christine was proving to be a perfect partner both on and off the dance floor, and he was the happiest he had been for a very long time.
A very large bunch of rare and exotic flowers was delivered to the McCoy family residence in Georgia not long after McCoy’s first…tango with Christine, with a card that said simply “You were right about Cotillion. All my love, Len.”
“Eighteenth century Vienna my ass,” muttered his delighted mother fondly, and went to find a vase.